Naked Empire

"Looks like we're too late," she said when they came out from behind cover and saw the legions of men pouring in all around them.

How did Nicholas know when and where they were going to attack? There had been no one around-no races, not so much as a mouse had been there when they had made their plans as they moved through the countryside. How could he have known?

"Dear spirits," Cara said. "I didn't think they had this many men in Bandakar."

The roar of the soldiers was deafening as they charged in. Richard was already spent. Each deep breath he pulled was agonizingly painful. He knew that there was no choice.

He had to find a way to get to Kahlan. He had to hold out at least that long.

Richard whistled in a signal to gather his men. As Anson and Owen ran up. Richard looked around and saw most of the others.

"We have to try to break out of here. There's too many of them. Slay together. We're going to try to punch through. If we make it, scatter and try to make it back to the forest."

With Cara at one side, Tom at the other, Richard charged at the head of his men toward the enemy lines. Thousands of the Imperial Order soldiers poured out from the city around them and into the open. It was a frightening sight. There were so many that it almost seemed as if the ground itself were moving.

Before Richard reached the soldiers, the morning suddenly lit with blinding blasts of fire. Thunderous eruptions of flame tore through the enemy lines, killing men by the hundreds. Sod, trees, and men were hurled into the air. Men, their clothes, hair, and flesh burning, tumbled across the ground.

Richard heard a howl coming from behind. It sounded somehow familiar.

He turned just in time to see a roiling ball of liquid yellow flame wailing through the air toward them. It expanded as it came, tumbling with seething, deadly intensity.

Wizard's fire.

The incandescent, white-hot inferno roared by just overhead. Once past Richard and his men, it descended, crashing down among the enemy soldiers, spilling a flood of liquid death out among them. Wizard's fire stuck to what it touched, burning with ferocious intensity. A single droplet of it would burn down through a man's leg to the bone. It was horrifyingly deadly. It was said to be so excruciatingly painful that those who lived longed only for death.

The question was, who was it coming from?

To the other side, men of the Order fell as something scythed through their ranks. It almost looked as if a single blade cut them down by the hundreds, ripping them apart with bloody ferocity. But who was doing it?

There was no time to stand around and wonder. Richard and his men had to turn to meet the soldiers who made it through the devastating conjuring.

Now that their numbers had been so thinned, the Imperial Order soldiers were unable to mount an effective attack. Their charge fell apart on the blades of Richard's men.

As they fought, more deadly fire came in to catch those trying to run, or those who massed to attack. In other places, Order soldiers fell without Richard or his men touching them. They gasped in great agony, clutching their chests, and fell dead.

Before long, the morning fell silent but for the groans of the wounded.

Richard's men rallied around him, unsure of what had happened, worried that whatever had befallen these men might suddenly turn and befall them as well.

Richard realized that they didn't see the attack of wizard's fire and magic in the same way as he did; to them it must seem a miracle of salvation.

Richard spotted two people beside one of the buildings off to the side of the grounds. One was taller than the other. He squinted, trying to make them out, but he just couldn't see who they were. With a hand on Tom's shoulder for support, they headed toward the two figures.

"Richard, my boy," Nathan said when Richard made it over to him. "So good to find you well."

Ann, a squat woman in a plain gray dress, smiled that knowing smile of hers, so filled with joy, satisfaction, and at the same time a kind of knowing tolerance.

"I doubt you two could imagine how glad I am to see you," Richard said, still catching his breath, trying not to breathe too deeply. "But what are you doing here? How in the world did you find me?"

Nathan leaned in with a sly smile. "Prophecy, my boy."

Nathan wore high boots and a ruffled white shirt with a vest and an elegant green velvet cape attached at his right shoulder. The prophet cut quite the figure.

Richard saw then that Nathan was wearing an exquisite sword in a polished scabbard. It seemed to Richard rather odd for a wizard who could command wizard's fire to carry a sword. It seemed even more odd to see the man abruptly draw the weapon.

Ann suddenly gasped as someone sprang from behind the building and grabbed her. It was one of the people from the city who had gathered to protect the army-a tall, slender, pinched-faced woman with a formidable scowl and a long knife.